Lars T. Lih's contribution to a Leninism for the 21st century

If a
spectre haunted 19th century Europe, as Marx said of the
embryonic communist movement, then the name of Lenin was no ghost for the 20th century
bourgeoisie, it was a terrifying reality.

For the
capitalists, with Leninism the communist phantom came howling out of the
underworld, beginning with the 1917 Russian Revolution, sweeping whole
continents clean of capitalist rule. Millions of human beings found their
life’s purpose in learning from and extending into their own national contexts
the ideas of Lenin.

Epic
intellectual – and sometimes bitter, physical – conflicts have been waged over
the meaning of Lenin’s ideas. Among leftists, the Trotskyists in particular, to
their ever-lasting credit, argued for a revolutionary, liberationist reading of
Lenin, in defiance of Stalin’s bureaucratic evisceration, often at the cost of
their lives.

On the
right, a whole industry of conservative, Cold War warrior intellectuals has
made an easy living proving that Lenin really opposed the independence of the
working class and that his ideas led straight to Stalinism. Their logic is that
no matter how unhappy workers may feel under capitalism, they dare not tamper
with the world as it is; anything is better than the dread Leninism/Stalinism.

Better that
we trudge to work each day with our eyes downcast than dream of utopias, these dreary
bourgeois ideologues intone. Their reactionary accounts almost invariably focus
on one book by Lenin (but not its entirety): What Is to Be Done?

Just three
words plucked from two famous paragraphs are the source of all Leninism’s supposed
faults: “spontaneity”, “divert” and “from without”. Upon this rickety scaffold
it is claimed that Lenin feared workers’ spontaneous development, wanted to
divert it from its natural course by the arrogant intervention of non-workers
and hoped to create a new, undemocratic, centralised “vanguard” party operating
conspiratorially.

Essentially,
he is depicted as dishonestly pretending to uphold Marxist orthodoxy.

What Is to
Be Done?

So, a
fundamental starting point for all readings of Lenin, be they revolutionary,
Stalinist or bourgeois reactionary, is this short 1902 booklet. Subtitled “Burning Questions of Our
Movement”, it was a contribution to a debate within the Russian Social
Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) that culminated in the famous split in the
movement at its 1903 congress, where the words Bolshevik (majority) and
Menshevik (minority) first entered history.

Lenin was
arguing for a new type of party organisation for the RSDLP, which came to be
known as the “Leninist vanguard” party. Between Trotskyists and Stalinists
there developed, especially after WWII, a struggle to best exemplify this
Bolshevik principle, leading to all kinds of distortions.

Stalinists,
infamously, self-ordained as the working-class leadership, believed that they
could dispense with such niceties as, for example, democracy in trade union
elections, or freedom of thought within their organisations or the workers’
movement as a whole. Trotskyists, vying to outshine the Stalinists with their
ardour, often displayed voluntarism (the practice, seen as a virtue, of
demanding unrealistic levels of commitment) that was personally and
organisationally destructive.

A terrible
irony is that the Trotskyist movement produced some of the worst, egomaniacal
leaders, dedicated to combating the Stalinist cult of the personality through
constructing their own. Such names as Juan Posadas, Michel Pablo, Gerry Healy
and Jack Barnes mean little outside the tiny circle of initiates, but those
individuals did much to besmirch the name of Leon Trotsky by attempting to
claim his mantle, and through him Lenin.

Reactionary
conservatives delight in exposing all this and drawing a line between Lenin and
the foolishness perpetrated in his name. All sins begin, they claim, with Lenin’s elitist and manipulative attitude
towards the working class and often their jaded reading of What Is to Be Done? is their starting point.

As the
Bolivarian Revolution emanating from Latin America forges a new tradition of socialism
of the 21stcentury, Lars Lih,
without stating it, has made an important contribution towards creating a “Leninism
of the 21st century”. He has
brought penetrating linguistic expertise and an ability to forensically dig
deep in the archives to bring Lenin’s original conceptions to light.

Lih’s project

In What Is to Be Done?, Lenin refers to a
small number of people on nearly every page, Lih points out: Elena Kuskova and
Sergei Prokopovich of the Credo
group, K.M. Taktarev of Rabochaia mysl,
Boris Krichevskii and Alexandr Martynov and “b-v” (pseudonym for Boris
Savinkov) of Rabochee delo, L.
Nadezhdin of Svoboda and the Joint Letter (which was sent to Iskra by a group of Siberian exiles).[1] Most of these barely even
rate as historical footnotes anymore.

Lih’s
project is to trawl through all the Russian-language original texts that Lenin
mentions (even in passing), extract their meaning (often through methodical
examination of Russian grammar and tracing problems of translation), compare
them to the overall thinking of the international socialist movement of the
time, dominated as it was by the German Social Democratic Party, and explain
how the debates played out within the RSDLP.

All that,
plus argue a case against what he calls the “textbook” interpretation of What Is to Be Done? The “textbook
interpretation” is that long held by both academics (usually anti-Leninists)
and those Lih calls “activists”: Paul Le Blanc, Tony Cliff and other socialist
leaders. (Lih does not distinguish Stalinist “activists” from anti-Stalinists;
Stalinism simply does not enter into his scheme of things.)

This is all
topped off with his own translation of What
Is to Be Done?

No wonder
it’s a door-stopper of a book and no wonder seemingly endless pages argue for a
fine definition of, say, a particular Russian word or why an translation from
1929, which has been carried through later editions, is inaccurate.

This is an
academic tome, but only such a work could do service to Lih’s project, which is
to completely renew our understanding of Lenin and Leninism. It is to Lih’s
credit that he successfully steers the reader through this hall of mirrors.

Lenin’s project

Is it actually
legitimate for the disparate voices asserting Lenin as their source to claim as
their own What Is to Be Done? Lih
quotes Lenin, writing in the preface to a 1907 collection of his writings called
Twelve Years, warning precisely
against that:

The basic
mistake made by people who polemicise with What
Is to Be Done? at the present time is that they tear this production
completely out of a specific historical context, out of a specific and by now
long-past period in the development of our party.[2]

Twelve Years was written in a short
period of democratic freedom forced upon tsarism by the 1905 Russian revolution.
Lenin had to argue hard and long to convince the Bolsheviks, experts at the
underground struggle, of the necessity to surface and organise themselves
utilising the full attributes of internal democracy.

This
contrasts with the period in which What
Is to Be Done? was written, one in which the embattled Russian Marxist movement
was beginning to move out of its “small circle” existence. Constantly harried
by the tsarist secret police, in 1903 the Russian revolutionaries (of all
stripes) were forced to operate underground in self-selected, secretive groups.

Different
circles of revolutionary Social Democrats (as Marxists were known as at the
time) produced short-lived newspapers that were circulated hand to hand in the
factories (generally each circle was known by the name of its newspaper). On
average, leading activists could expect to operate for around three months
before being arrested and deported to Siberia, whereupon new leaders would have
to begin the whole painful process of organisation again.

The exile grouping
that Lenin was part of published Iskra
(the Spark). “What Is To Be Done? is a summary of Iskra tactics and Iskra
organisational policy in 1901 and 1902. Precisely a ‘summary’, no more and no
less”, Lenin wrote in Twelve Years.[3]

In 1902, what
was crucial was that the Russian workers were on the move, ultimately towards
the 1905 Revolution, the prelude to 1917. The workers were moving beyond the “spontaneity”
of their struggle.

Stikhiinost

Thus, Lenin
explained, in one of the passages that, ripped out of context, is used to
batter his name:

Hence,
our task, the task of Social-Democracy, is to combat spontaneity, to divert the working-class
movement from this spontaneous, trade-unionist striving to come under the wing
of the bourgeoisie, and to bring it under the wing of revolutionary Social
Democracy.[4]

As Lih
carefully explains, the English word ‘”spontaneity” was a 1929 translation of Lenin’s Russian term stikhiinost, which, Lih says, contains
the meaning of the English “spontaneity” combined with a sense of an elemental
force.

For a
recent political example: the Palm Island riot in Queensland that followed the
whitewash of Indigenous man Mulrunji Doomadgee’s
death was stikhiinost;unplanned, impassioned, justified, but
ultimately self-defeating.

Prior to
1903, in Russia, it was not unknown for workers to strike, drive the police out
of whole areas of a city or town, then break into the vodka stores and
drunkenly let the police regain the upper hand. It was because the workers had
started to go beyond this stikhiinost
that Lenin was demanding that the RDSLP seriously organise itself to lead the
rebellions.

Lenin was
arguing both against the danger of
the RDSLP activists lowering the level of their politics to reflect the stikhiinost level of the workers and for the need of the activists to catch
up with the workers whose “spontaneous” struggle was advancing rapidly and
might leave the RSDLP behind.

An
interesting example of the ignorance upon which criticisms of Lenin is based is
explained by Lih. Rosa Luxemburg was enrolled by Lenin’s Menshevik opponents to
write against him. She wrote an article in 1904 castigating his underestimation
of the creative movement of Russian workers. In evidence she wielded an Iskra article that demonstrated the Russian
proletariat’s resourcefulness, of which she said Lenin was unaware. Little did
she know that the very source that she rested her case upon was in fact written
by Lenin in Iskra without a by-line.

Moreover,
Lih argues, the Russian expression, trediunionizm,
which Lenin criticised, cannot be understood
properly if simply transcribed into the English “trade unionism”. Lenin’s
target was the ideology that trade unions are all that is needed, as distinct
from an independent class-based workers’ socialist party

The classic
home of this trediunionizm was
England, but Lenin’s view of British trade unionism was nuanced. He was dead-set
against trediunionizm but still
admired in many ways British trade unionism, that is, the activity, organisational
practices, etc. of the British unions, citing the example of the militant
leader Robert Knight.

Lenin explained
that every trade union secretary “always helps the
workers to carry on the economic struggle, he helps them to expose factory
abuses, explains the injustice of the laws and of measures that hamper the freedom
to strike and to picket” etc.[5]

But
Lenin was staunch in distinguishing revolutionary trade union activity from trediunionizm, in one of the most famous passages
in What Is to Be Done?:

It
cannot be too strongly maintained that this is still not
Social-Democracy, that the Social-Democrat’s ideal should not be the trade
union secretary, but the tribune of the people, who is able to react to
every manifestation of tyranny and oppression, no matter where it appears, no
matter what stratum or class of the people it affects; who is able to generalise
all these manifestations and produce a single picture of police violence and
capitalist exploitation; who is able to take advantage of every event, however
small, in order to set forth before all his socialist convictions and
his democratic demands, in order to clarify for all and everyone the
world-historic significance of the struggle for the emancipation of the
proletariat.[6]

Lenin recognised the importance of economic, trade union struggle because
it pitted worker against capitalist. But the socialist movement required that
and more, the struggle against tsarism, which needed a much higher level of
political understanding because of its complexities.

Revoliutstionery
po professii

To tie all
these ideological and practical tasks together, Lenin argued, the party would
need to take its underground existence seriously and organise conspiratorially
to avoid being broken up. Secrecy was to be adhered to professionally as
opposed to what has been translated as “amateurism” or “primativism”.

This period
of working-class upsurge, argued Lenin, required revoliutstionery po professii, skilled in the arts of underground
operations. Such people were not intellectual “professional revolutionaries”,
as that term has been translated and interpreted, Lih says. In English the term
“professional” has taken on connotations of someone who earns their living
somewhat above the normal lot of workers, such as a professional engineer or
even a professional sportsperson.

In Russian,
the noun professiya is applied to
just about any kind of work requiring skills and training. The phrase for
"plumber by trade", for example, is santekhnik po professii.

The sense
of Lenin’s revoliutsioner po professii
is thus something like, “skilled, experienced revolutionary”. It doesn't have
the slightest tang of elitism; such a person is completely at one with the
workers she or he strives to influence. Lih’s point is that, when understood
this way, Lenin's argument takes on a meaning quite different from the one
usually assumed.

For Lenin,
the revoliutsioner po professii could
be workers or anyone else who could organise and lead with proper regard to
secrecy, not middle-class intellectuals intervening in the working-class
movement to lead it astray, which is the meaning imposed on his work by hostile
readers (and some fervent ultra-leftists). Lenin’s revoliutsioner po professii would intervene to redirect (or divert)
the workers to go beyond their economic struggles towards the political
struggle for democratic rights and from there to socialism.

The light and air of the labour
movement

Lenin’s
main target in 1902 was Rabochee delo
as the representative of the political trend of “Economism” in the Russian social
democratic movement. “Economists” downplayed the importance of struggling for
political freedom in Russia as a requisite for building the workers’ movement.

Lenin
summarised Economism as “infatuation with the strike movement and economic
struggles”. Moreover, at the time in which he wrote, Economism was “the then dominant
trend” within
19th century social democracy internationally, not just in the
Russian movement. The words ‘”economic” and “political” held particular
meaning. In both Germany and Russia social democracy suffered from repression
and had to operate illegally.

The “political
struggle” was essentially the battle to win legality, or in Russia, to
overthrow tsarism and win political freedom as a launch pad for the struggle
for socialism. The “economic struggle” emphasised working for such things as
factory legislation as a principle.

Of course,
anarchists and others who insisted on the primacy of the economic struggle did
have a form of politics. Lenin himself apologised for using the clumsy
expression “Economism”, but did it because it was in common use.

Lih argues
that without an understanding of the international socialist movement of the
times, dominated as it was by the German Social Democrats, ideologically
tutored by Karl Kautsky and within which Eduard Bernstein was a controversial
but prominent figure, the disputes within the RSDLP cannot be comprehended.

In opposing
the Economists, Lenin supported Kautsky’s thinking, as expressed in his book, Class Struggle, which was a commentary
on the German SDP’s Erfurt Programme:

On this
account, wherever the working class has endeavoured to improve its economic
position it has made political demands, especially demands for a free press and
the right of assemblage. These privileges are to the proletariat the
prerequisites of life; they are the light and air of the labour movement. Whoever
attempts to deny them, no matter what his pretensions, is to be reckoned among
the worst enemies of the working-class.[7]

The
struggle for the “light and air” of democracy is the motivating thrust of What Is to Be Done? and without an
understanding of its fundamental importance there is no understanding Lenin.

More than
this, Lenin aspired to organise the RSDLP into as tight a campaigning unit as
the German SDP. In its period of underground struggle against Bismarck, the SDP
had published a weekly newspaper abroad. So effectively was it smuggled into
and distributed in Germany that Bismarck himself was believed to have quipped
that the SDP’s “postal service” was better than the state post office.

Kautsky
outlined a schema for building SDP influence which advanced the formula that social
democracy is the merger of the ideology of socialism and the workers’ movement.
This was in opposition to the trends first criticised by Marx in the Communist Manifesto, which saw socialism
as a kind of benevolent missionary activity conducted from above by
philanthropic intellectuals.

Kautsky
envisaged circles of influence continually moving outwards from more highly politically
educated and organised workers, through layers of less advanced parts of the
class until the whole class was organised and led by the socialists.

For Lenin,
following Kautsky, the role of the Marxists was therefore to fight against
those who wished to maintain the separation of socialism from the workers’
movement, including simplistic “economist” non-political trade unionism which
ignored the political cause of the class.

The need to
fight the separation of socialism from the workers is the meaning of the
polemics against Economism in the book. Secondary targets were the terrorists,
who also ignored the necessity of merging the workers’ movement with socialism.

Key to all
this was the need to win democratic space for the revolutionaries to operate
in.

Lih sums up
Lenin’s arguments, which the vast majority of the RSDLP supported:

The merger
formula – ‘Social Democracy is the merger of socialism and the worker movement’
– pulls all Kautsky’s various arguments together. The expanding circle of
awareness, the original and nearly fatal separation of socialism and the worker
movement, the two-front polemical war against those who refuse the great
Marxian synthesis, political freedom as light and air for the proletariat, the
strength that comes from an inspiring final goal, the need for disciplined,
modern parties of nation-wide scope, the aspiration to become a Volkspartei,
the need to carry out the democratic tasks that the bourgeois is too scared to
undertake, and finally, Social Democracy’s own exalted sense of mission – all
these flow from the merger narrative. [8]

Lih quotes
extensively from socialist leaders of the period, Menshevik and Bolshevik, to
show the commonality of this “merger” argument. This is what Lih calls the
“good news”, world-historical mission of social democracy, to bring socialism
to willing workers, and which sets the context for Lenin’s book on how Russian
social democracy can carry out this undertaking.

The Lenin
of What Is to Be Done? is the
exemplary social democrat of his time. He is fiercely arguing that the workers
can and will embrace the teachings of Marxism – in fact, he is possessed by his
confidence in the working class. His polemical tone appears because he must
urgently convince doubters that the workers can be won directly to social democracy,
not to any watered down substitute for it, and effectively organise the party for
the task.

Hence the
zeal of his stern case against those who try to say the workers need to go
through lower stages of political development, or aren’t ready, or should not
embrace political tasks which are beyond them.

And hence
the tremendous value of this magnum opus from Lars Lih. As the wreckage of 20th
century Stalinist failures is pushed aside by the forces articulating innovative
socialism Lenin Rediscovered allows
us to see Lenin afresh, relearn the lessons of his epic struggles and creatively
apply them.

Those who
meet this challenge will be the exemplary Leninists of the 21st century.

Leninism: past, present and future

How would
Lenin have met these challenges? Perhaps the clearest guide is given in his
1907 Preface to the Collection Twelve Years,
where he mused that the democratic conditions that appeared in 1905
required “an irrevocable break with the old circle
ways that had outlived their day.“[9]

“The circles were necessary in their day and played a
positive role”, he explained. Indeed, under tsarism, socialism could only have
developed through them, complete with their conspiratorial organisation and
inherently limited internal democracy, “nearly always based on personal
friendship”.

The
circles’ controversial, polemical tone was due to the fact that they were
debating “the most general principles and the fundamental aims of all
Social-Democratic policy generally” and “these seemingly minor differences were
actually of immense importance”.

Subsequent
history unfortunately forged “Leninists” who mistook this hothouse polemical
atmosphere as representing the best of the tradition, not realising that Lenin
himself described it as “inherited from the past and is unsuited to our present
tasks”. As Paul Kellogg, like Lars Lih, another “re-contexturaliser” of Lenin
has termed it, “Leninism: It’s not what you think”.[10]

Lenin,
sharply called upon his readers “to break with many of the circle traditions,
forget and discard many of the trivial features of circle activity and circle
squabbles, so as to concentrate on the tasks of Social-Democracy in the present
period.”

Leninists
of various traditions are beginning to reconsider their previous dogmas and
break from them. In France, they have founded the Nouveau parti anticapitaliste
(New Anti-Capitalist Party, NPA), in Australia the Socialist Alliance and many
are casting about for similar formations in other countries.

Lenin
wanted socialists to take advantage of the “light and air” of democracy to
organise the class struggle, not waste time in pious sectarian game playing,
which has been the fate of too many 20th century Leninists.

[Barry
Healy is an activist with the Australian Socialist Alliance in Perth,
Australia.]